Donald Trump got suckered!

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Tuesday September 27, 2016 · 2:50 PM PDT

2016/09/27 · 14:50

DJT is used to conning others, but in last night’s debate he was led into an elaborately laid trap and proved himself to be just another mark ripe for entrapping. Apparently the story Clinton told about Ms. Machado during one of the last segments of the debate had been carefully crafted for weeks ahead of time. So while it seemed to me as an observer to have been something she had prepared to bring up, I had no idea that her campaign had orchestrated an entire media event to follow it.

Matt Yglesias at VOX had the whole story and you should read it there. But the gist of it is that Ms. Machado had already filmed a 2 minute video, in Spanish, that the campaign released today. AND she sat for several high profile interviews, one with Cosmopolitan that came out today and one with the Guardian.

To make matters jollier, of course, Trump just could not let the debate episode wither away. He actually brought it up himself on Fox and Friends this morning. Yglesias winds up the piece:

Not just a crude bully, a racist, a liar, or a misogynist — it’s Donald Trump as a sucker. The feud with the Khan family from earlier this summer is widely regarded as a self-inflicted fiasco, but at a minimum it appears to have been a genuine accident — the Khans’ speech was not scheduled for primetime, and Democrats seem to have underrated how powerful it would be.

The new war with Machado is nothing like that. The Clinton campaign laid surprisingly intricate groundwork to turn her into a major story both at the debate and in the days following it.

And Trump fell for it, revealing a new side to himself that the public hasn’t really seen before.

So HRC just sucker punched the guy with the glass jaw and the thin skin. And he leaned into it, bigly.

Big Voting Rights Win in Wi

naknak

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Monday August 22, 2016 · 5:46 PM PDT

2016/08/22 · 17:46

The same (Republican) judges at the 7th Cicuit Court of Appeals who stayed Federal judge Peterson’s ruling greatly loosening the voter ID requirements, just refused to stay the rest of the ruling. And that means local election commissions can set the days and hours and LOCATIONS for early voting to meet the needs of their own communities. This is a big deal because the law Peterson overturned stipulated that every municipality could provide only ONE early voting location, regardless of how many eligible voters the municipality serves. So An upscale exurb like River Hills with a population <1500 got one location; Milwaukee with a population of >500k also got ONE and only one. No longer! Milwaukee can now provide multiple early voting locations, can add evening hour, and can offer weekend hours.

Souls to to the Polls programs that help get voters to early voting locations on Sundays after church were outlawed and can now be reinstated. This is HUGE for Wisconsin voters, especially urban voters.

Stop Walker's Latest Attack on Wisconsin

naknak

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Friday September 18, 2015 · 3:49 PM PDT

2015/09/18 · 15:49

Citizens of Wisconsin: immediate action needed to stop Scott Walker and his henchmen from turning our exemplary, nonpartisan Government Accountability Board from an election law and campaign ethics watchdog into a Republican lapdog! If you're a citizen of Wisconsin and you value clean and fair campaigns and elections, sign our petition to demand that the legislature keep its hands off GAB.

Walker's attacks on democracy never end. The coming assault on Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board is just the latest in a long string of power grabs that aim to ensure GOP control over the state for decades.

Just a week after announcing his run for the presidency, Scott Walker announced that "he supports dismantling and replacing the state’s independent elections and ethics board.... In its place, Walker said, he supports the creation of 'something completely new that is truly accountable to the people of the state of Wisconsin.' Walker left open the possibility that a replacement board could have partisan leadership, compared to the current board, made up of six former judges" (Wisconsin State Journal, July 21, 2015).

(For a concise history of GAB's creation, see the League of Women Voters League of Women Voters' press release.)

Keep reading below the orange dingbat, to get the full-bodied outrage we need to stop this war on the citizens of Wisconsin.

naknak

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Friday December 20, 2013 · 4:01 PM PST

2013/12/20 · 16:01

So-called TRAP laws whose effects are to deny women access to legal abortion services have become legion in a variety of states. In WI, one such law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within a 30 mile radius of the clinic where the abortion was performed was signed on Friday, July 5, 2013, and was to have gone into effect the following Monday! A federal district judge issued a temporary injunction to prevent the state from enforcing the law until a trial on the merits could be held. The state immediately appealed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to try to get the injunction lifted.

Today the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit affirmed the preliminary injunction The decision does not (yet) strike down the law but it does prevent the state from enforcing the law until the case can be heard in the district court. Even better, the opinion by Posner, Manion, and Hamilton appears to provide some pretty good guidance to plaintiffs.

That said, the opinion (see https://aclu-wi.org/...) makes it clear that the appellate judges are highly skeptical about the law's purpose:

The district judge said in a footnote in his opinion that while he would “await trial on the issue, … the complete absence of an admitting privileges requirement for clinical [i.e., outpatient] procedures including for those with greater risk is certainly evidence that Wisconsin Legislature’s only purpose in its enactment was to restrict the availability of safe, legal abortion in this State, particularly given the lack of any demonstrable medical benefit for its requirement either presented to the Legislature or [to] this court” (emphasis in original). A fuller enumeration of considerations based on purpose would include the two‐day deadline for obtaining admitting privileges, the apparent absence of any medical benefit from requiring doctors who perform abortions to have such privileges at a nearby or even any hospital, the differential treatment of abortion vis‐à‐vis medical procedures that are at least as dangerous as abortions and probably more so, and finally the strange private civil remedy for violations: The father or grandparent of the “aborted unborn child” is entitled to obtain damages, including for emotional and psychological distress, if the abortion was performed by a doctor who violated the admitting‐privileges provision. Wis. Stat. § 253.095(4)(a). Yet if the law is aimed only at protecting the mother’s health, a violation of the law could harm the fetus’s father or grandparent only if the mother were injured as a result of her abortion doctor’s lacking the required admitting privileges. But no proof of such injury is required to entitle the father or grandparent to damages if he proves a violation and resulting emotional or psychological injury to himself.

See more after the squiggle. Read More

Stop Shedding Crocodile Tears

naknak

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Sunday November 10, 2013 · 3:01 PM PST

2013/11/10 · 15:01

No more crocodile tears for those folks whose sub-par insurance is no longer available to them. So what if the Affordable Care Act is forcing you to chose a new health insurance plan? Big deal. My employer did the same thing to me just 18 months after I had had my aortic valve replaced, with the result that I could no longer see my physician of 20 years! AND my premiums and co-pays went up.

My experience is hardly unique or even special. A health insurance system that puts decision-making largely in the hands of employers and for-profit companies results in situations like mine -- and I'm sure tens of millions of other people in the country have experienced similarly unwanted changes to their policies and providers over the years.

naknak

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Saturday March 28, 2009 · 1:29 PM PDT

2009/03/28 · 13:29

The NYTimes has just published a story announcing that "a high-level Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, on whether they violated international law by providing a legalistic framework to justify the use of torture of American prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said."

The six Bushies, according the account, are Gonzo, Feith, Addington, Haynes, Bybee, and Yoo. A very good place to start. The investigative judge who has referred the case to the prosecutor is the same courageous man who indicted Pinochet.

naknak

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Wednesday February 13, 2008 · 11:42 AM PST

2008/02/13 · 11:42

Donna Edwards' win in the MD CD-4 was big news, welcome news, to the progressive community and the netroots who backed her -- big time. We've succeeded in ousting a corrupt and so-called "moderate" Democrat in favor of a much more progressive and left-leaning one. Congratulations are in order for Ms. Edwards, her campaign staff, and her supporters.

While we're celebrating, though, it would be a good thing to bend our brains around the meaning of Edwards' win when it is coupled with the other "upset" in Maryland yesterday: Representative Wayne Gilchrest's loss in the Republican primary to a "real conservative" backed by James Dobson and the Club for Growth. (Though I have always voted for the doomed Democrat in previous district elections, Gilchrest is my representative in Congress and I have on several occasions contacted his office to express my views.) Teacherken notes the Gilchrest defeat in passing, but he does not reflect much on its meaning. Other than that, I've seen little mention of the two upsets together. So, follow me after the break for some noodling.

naknak

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Sunday February 10, 2008 · 10:43 AM PST

2008/02/10 · 10:43

So Super Tuesday came and went: my open heart surgery did likewise. I was able to pipe in CNN round the clock, but perhaps fortunately don't remember much of the blather. Anyway, I'm home now and recovering nicely, just to keep all those Kossacks who asked informed. But I am now wondering whether the heart of our party can be so easily mended.

As a former Edwards supporter (and one who voted for him by absentee ballot before he suspended his campaign), I am now a more neutral observer of the unfolding scene. I have a lot of catching up to do, but am more than a little dismayed by the kind of bitterness I see in today's column by Frank Rich. The opposition to Hillary Clinton seems out of all proportion to me, and that fact embroils me in the kind of identity politics I don't like (in other words, I feel the pull of gender more strongly when I feel she's being attacked unfairly). So I wish Obama would stop saying things like "Hillary's supporters will vote for me but my supporters may not vote for her." This sort of thing suggests poor sportsmanship and seems to elevate personality over sound political strategies.

naknak

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Saturday February 02, 2008 · 9:20 AM PST

2008/02/02 · 09:20

In my recent comments and diaries, I have tried to advocate for wisdom over passion: progressives need to stop being distracted by the rigors of a hotly contested and vigorous nominating process and keep their eyes on the prize. The passion of Obama partisans and Clinton partisans (I was an Edwards partisan, btw) is praiseworthy and necessary, BUT ...

We simply must keep our eyes on election day in November. And I don't mean reading tea leaves to try to discern who is more likely to beat whichever GOP bastard (increasingly likely to be McCain). I mean focusing on the issues that will win for us on the real super Tuesday. So I'd like to bring two pieces to the attention of Kossacks today, one from the NY Times and one from the Washington Post.

naknak

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Wednesday January 30, 2008 · 5:28 PM PST

2008/01/30 · 17:28

In the great hullabaloo about whether Obama or Clinton is the more progressive, has more spine, leads more or better, or whatever, it's instructive to do a little reviewing.

Mukasey is just as bad as Gonzo when it comes to

telling the truth

condoning torture

So it's useful to ask who voted to confirm, who voted against, and WHO DID NOT VOTE.

naknak

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Tuesday January 29, 2008 · 2:06 PM PST

2008/01/29 · 14:06

Seriously. That's the day I am scheduled for open heart surgery to replace a congenitally defective aortic valve. So I probably won't even get the results of the day's events (or at least won't remember them! until several days later -- a real hardship for a political junkie like myself.

To replace the malfunctioning part, the surgeon will stop my heart (and put me on a heart lung machine). When he's done, he'll reboot me. All should be well but just in case it isn't, I want to explain why I voted for Edwards in the Maryland primary.

I've been around a while -- marched on Washington in the 60s, decided to give the democratic convention in Chicago in '68 a miss at the last minute, voted for McGovern and even for Dukakis (yikes!). I've participated in my share of lost causes (equal rights amendment, anyone?) but am generally something of a pragmatist especially as I have grown older and seen more great ideas and ideals shrivel up in our two-party machine system. So why did I stick with Edwards?

naknak

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Monday January 28, 2008 · 3:55 PM PST

2008/01/28 · 15:55

Of course it's only to be expected from our felon-in-chief: his minions at the Pentagon are planning to make sure whoever takes over the White House on Jan. 20, 2009, will have to ask congress immediately for off-budget funding for the WARS in Iraq and Afghanistan. EVEN IF that new commander-in-chief intends to withdraw our troops from Irag immediately.

According to a story on All Things Considered this evening, the Pentagon's budget (some $500 billion -- more than the whole rest of the world spends on military matters) does not include any war funding. So there's a second request for $70b to fund the wars. Only that's not all: the $70b for the war represents only 25% of what will be "needed" for the coming fiscal year. So the real total (right now at least) is a whopping $280b. Bringing the total defense appropriation request up to $750b. For ONE YEAR. That's 3/4 of a trillion, folks.

There's more....

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Donald Trump got suckered!

Big Voting Rights Win in Wi

Stop Walker's Latest Attack on Wisconsin

Draconian Abortion Law in WI Enjoined!

Stop Shedding Crocodile Tears

Intn'l War Crimes Prosecutions for Bushies?

a post-partisan puzzle

Death and resurrection

eyes on the (november) prize

Mukasey and our candidates

I will die on 2/5/08

Dangerous Bush Dirty Tricks